I Watched the Coinbase Documentary So You Don’t Have To
One might imagine that, if you gave a documentary team unfettered access to a large, well-funded, and controversy-prone cryptocurrency-exchange company over the same three-year period that bitcoin reached its highest price in history and crypto hype broke into mainstream culture, it’d be easy to produce a film that, at the very least, entertains. Crypto’s rise is a story ripe for cinema, one that features endless scammers, newly minted billionaires, flashy startups, gobs of venture capital, fortunes gained and lost overnight, marketplaces for illicit substances, and a technology that looks to replace the global financial system. Given the subject matter, what is most impressive about Coin: A Founder’s Story, the Coinbase documentary, is how bone-grindingly dull it is.
Over 84 monotonous minutes, the viewer follows Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong through the tumultuous adolescence of his cryptocurrency company. What we see isn’t dramatic. In fact, the film—perhaps unintentionally—does an admirable job showcasing the least-sexy aspects and daily grind of entrepreneurship. Most of what we see of our billionaire protagonist is a series of shots as he works (often alone) from his various homes and offices, or gets into and out of chauffeured cars and private jets. There’s no partying or lavish living—just prep calls, Zoom meetings, onstage conference interviews, and executive coaching sessions. At one point in the documentary, Armstrong says that Coinbase aims to be the “adult in
